James White, Jr. wrote an article entitled How to Successfully Pass the Torch where he points out that

" There are basically six groups of people that should be addressed in a succession plan. Those include the owner, his or her spouse, his or her children or relatives that are involved in the business, his or her children or relatives that are not involved in the business, the spouses of his or her children or relatives that are not involved in the business, and other key employees."

I think this is can be a good starting point for determining the goals of a business succession plan.  Write down what the owner and spouse want for themselves, their children or other relatives, and the key employees.  Then rank those goals in order of importance.  Some of those goals may be incompatible.  If you've ranked them, you have a better sense of which ones will trump if they interfere with the achievement of other goals. 

Now that you have the goals and rankings, take that to your advisors (attorney, accountant, life insurance professional) and have them help you refine the goals, the time frames and the means of achieving them.  When you do that, you have a better chance of being included in the same category as this advisor's client, where a business succession plan worked because the partners had a plan that included a buy/sell agreement funded by life insurance.  Now, I don't know enough about that plan to be sure that all of the groups of people whose interests were involved felt satisfied.  For example, did any of the children of the deceased partner want to carry on the business?  But we do know that the surviving partner seems satisfied and the family probably won't complain about the proceeds of the life insurance.